Day 1 of Stay-at-Home Chocolate Dilemma

Day 1 of Stay-at-Home: Today I'm thinking about food. How are we going to continue to be in lock down and not constantly be eating junk food? I figure for starters I have to STOP BUYING IT. Then I really should clean out all the chocolate in the house (chocolate is one of my personal weaknesses). So here's a funny story: This morning, I walked into my daughter's room to put something away. She returned to college a week ago, although the school itself has been emptied out because of COVID, to move back into her off-campus apartment and be with her friends. On her night table sat a glass of wine (full!) and two containers of Trader Joe's chocolates: one box of chocolate covered almonds and one bag of chocolate covered power-berries. OK now I am faced with an ethical dilemma. I SHOULD just throw them out. But there is so much down time with the family...What would you do?

Teacher Teach Me

I watched the movie, “Amy”, the other night. It’s a sad and poignant film about Amy Winehouse, a uniquely talented young woman who had a troubled life of addiction. The movie was important, as it showed Amy – on her catapult to celebrity - as a human being with foibles and weaknesses, and how destructive fame can be to those who do not have the constitution for it.

The profound moment for me came in a scene with Tony Bennett, veteran crooner and – who knew? – philosopher, when he said to the camera, “Life teaches us how to live it – if you are lucky to live long enough.”

On the eve of turning 50, I cannot say how strongly this resonated with me. When I think of the things that used to bother me, the way I used to think, even last week, I can see the teacher of time – showing me more wisdom every day.

People are always complaining about getting older. There are entire industries dedicated to stopping the march of time. But we seldom hear a celebrity talk about the greatest gift of aging; wisdom.

My mother will be celebrating her 80^th birthday this year. She is one of those rare birds who, despite the aches and pains and troubles of being almost 80 (and there are many), appreciates that many of her ‘people’ were not lucky enough to live to be almost 80. And here she is. Life has taught her how to live it – and she is grateful to be here.

A Moving Story (somewhat explicit)

Recently, at a Bat Mitzvah, I had a conversation with a lovely gastroenterologist. She informed me that it is best to move your bowels in this way: just do it. There should be no reading material on the back of the toilet, no crossword puzzles or Sudoku, it is not the time to meditate or cogitate or write imaginary blog posts in your head. It is time to poop. Get in and get out.

This may well be good advice, although for those who tend more toward constipation it will be difficult to impossible to follow.

On the other hand, my aunt used to make the point that pooping takes time. She saved a whole fifteen minutes for it in her morning routine! She would make sure the house was quiet, she was not needed by anyone, and slip into her bathroom to give time to the process. Relaxed, she could let her autonomic nervous system do what it needed to do in its own time. Books, magazines, pondering; bring it on!

Like my husband’s grandmother used to say: "That’s what makes horse races." Honoring the differences in our bodies.

Either way, I find it a little awkward that, when I am on the toilet, I think of these two women. Three, actually.

I also think of my cousin’s daughter who, at a young age, asked this most brilliant question: Why is it that when it’s hard to poop it’s easy to wipe and when it’s easy to poop it’s hard to wipe?

Monday Morning

There are two kinds of weekends. There are the weekends where you do a lot; you travel, you have parties, you go to parties, you have planned activities. These are the weekends where you make memories. You feel like you actually did something. And on Monday morning, you and your memories are tired. You feel wiped out, not quite ready to hit the ground running.

The other kind of weekend is the one where you just BE. You take long walks. You clean. You cook. You hang out and watch football, or movies, or read a book. Very few memories are generated by that kind of weekend, but you gain something else. You rest.

Most of us are not used to making REST a part of our week. The Orthodox Jews, who don’t do any kind of “work” or travel or use electronics or cook or clean on the Sabbath, have put REST as a priority – mainly because it is written quite clearly in the bible! On the seventh day, you rest.

Much is written about the healing power of rest. When you start feeling a cold coming on, go to bed. Sleep is a powerful healing agent for all kinds of ailments. And yet, the importance of sleep is largely overlooked in our society. We push it to the edge, we burn the candle at both ends, we try to function on 5 or 6 hours of sleep just so we have more hours of the day to be productive. In grad school, I had a friend who was listening to subliminal tapes that allegedly made him need less sleep. Needless to say, he frequently fell asleep in class!

But there is another aspect to the importance of rest. We need rest from the daily grind of our mind.  Some people do a meditation practice, giving their brain a rest for a certain period of prescribed time. Others, like me, need purely unstructured time – to let the brain just unravel with threads of nothingness. I need the kind of weekend that allows for much staring into space. This is the kind of rest that no one talks about. This is the kind of rest that we might even feel ashamed about! In this day and age, to lie about doing nothing?

[As a side note, when I say 'nothingness' I don't really mean watching TV or playing video games. Those activites are not nothing - they stimulate our brains with constant barrages of images – to me, that is the opposite of rest.]

But there is great value in doing nothing. It can feed us in a way nothing else can. It can relax our brains – which are WAY over-stimulated – and help us get ready to face the week again.

[Another side note: everything in moderation J]

End of Summer

Aaaaah, summer. I think I am in the minority, but for most of my life, I have not loved summer. First of all, I don't love heat and humidity. I have very thick, curly, often unruly, hair - which means summer weather has historically not been my friend. I don't like to sweat, unless it's after a good work-out. I also don't do well with lots of unstructured time. It's not that I don't love a good vacation! But I do get excited when September rolls around again - the routine comes back, and I get energized in a different way.
When I was a kid, I loved going back to school in September. There was always a new-ness, a fresh-ness, a revitalization that felt good to me; new clothes, new books, new teachers, sometimes even a new school. In the start of the new year, you could promise to do some things a little differently. Like a New Year's resolution. Being Jewish, this time of year makes more sense to me for making New Year's resolutions. But putting religion aside, the way the light is waning, the weather is crisper, there is a quickening in the air that feels right for reflection.
I think September is the perfect time to take a look at yourself - take stock - and make a change for the better. There are so many easy things to put into place that can make a profound difference.
One thing I did recently was download a new app on my phone called "Headspace". Headspace is a free app that literally walks you through doing ten minutes of mindfulness meditation for ten days. The teacher is a well-spoken, genuine-sounding man who clearly has a lot of experience in mindfulness education. He uses real language, very accessible metaphors, and even lively animations to teach concepts so they are easy to grasp, even for the most distracted among us. He is also British, so I certainly don't mind listening to his voice for ten minutes! I have enjoyed these mini-meditations so much that I actually go to bed looking forward to waking early so I can listen to the next day's guided meditation! 
(I haven't yet gotten to the end of the ten days, so I'm not sure what he offers beyond that.)
As a health-care provider and a health educator, I certainly know of the myriad benefits of meditation - on mental, physical, chemical and spiritual health. I have an overactive mind, which in some ways is a huge plus, but has made it difficult for me to stick to a meditation practice in my life, although I have tried many times. In the five days that I have done this meditation, I have noticed feeling more energy, more calm and more insightful for the rest of the day. I am feeling very hopeful that with Headspace leading the way, I can start my new year with a new habit.

Christmas Cactus

I have a beautiful Christmas Cactus that sits in a turquoise clay pot. In the summer, it adorns my front porch, adding a splash of green and blue to my everyday comings and goings. Once the frost comes, the plant gets transferred inside to my living room, to take its place with the other plants. 

For those of you not familiar with the Christmas Cactus, it is a green succulent plant that doesn't look much like a cactus. For approximately 350 days a year, it is a generic green plant. I don't mean that in a bad way; I love the green-ness of it, and it adds a fresh alive energy to the room, as all healthy plants do. 

But in December, something happens to my Christmas Cactus. As if it had a smartphone or some sort of cosmic calendar to alert it of this specific time, the plant begins to develop pink buds on the ends of its leaves. By mid-month, those buds have bloomed into the most exquisite magenta-pink flowers. They are like little explosions of color, exploding from the green leaves. It never ceases to amaze me - year after year!

I love this constant source of surprise and joy. In my office, I am always spouting on about the body's 'Innate Intelligence'; "the power that made the body has the power to heal the body." I talk about the intricacies of physiology, the subtleties of the human being, life force. And then I look at my Christmas Cactus. Now there is an example of Innate Intelligence at its finest. Nature's gift to us. My cactus is an excellent reminder of the beauty of this time of year- the beauty of giving and of coming together with friends and family to share the surprises and joys (and explosions) of life.

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

To say my son is a sports fan would be a huge understatement. He loves watching, playing, talking about and thinking about sports. He does not get this trait from me, but from his father, who is also a huge sports fan. My husband's favorite sports to play are soccer and basketball. In fact, he was the captain of his varsity basketball team.

Partially because of this, when my son was 4 years old I signed him up for his first basketball class at the local rec center. I figured that, genetically, he was programmed to pick up a basketball and start dribbling. That was not the case, and for that first hour, he repeatedly slammed the ball down onto his foot, causing the ball to careen forward across the gym. My son's first experience with the game of basketball was an hour of pure humiliation; running helplessly across a gym floor chasing runaway basketballs. Needless to say, it was brutal. I think it was hard for my son, too.

When we got home, I took my husband aside and strongly suggested that he do some training with Abe. We had big expectations of that boy, and he was not going in a good direction. At four, he had not yet found sports. He was thoroughly obsessed with superheroes, and had only recently discovered the Jedi warriors. At this rate, he would not make varsity captain. My husband moved quickly into action; he got his basketball out of the storage shed, and there, on my Mexican tile kitchen floor, the tot started learning how to dribble. This made way for a new direction for Abe, away from his beloved Star Wars, and thus a new chapter had begun.

He practiced obsessively in the kitchen, much to my chagrin (but careful what you wish for) and eventually moved to the front walkway. For his 5th birthday we bought him a hoop. Since we didn't have a driveway, we set it up in the back yard on the grass. It was there that he started to learn to shoot. In fact, for his fifth birthday, we had about 20 kids in the back yard doing drills. Girls, too.

He continued to get better and better, partly because of his innate sports talent and partly because of his obsessive personality. The year he turned 5, he couldn't take his eyes off the NCAA players in March Madness. He started to really understand the game and its nuances. Even at the young age of 6 or 7, he would watch the NBA players and study their moves. A few years later, after we had moved to Acton, he started playing basketball in the winter in the community league. He excelled in the league and often felt good about his performance. You could see his little self-esteem developing, and the challenges that he overcame also contributed to that developing person inside his small frame. Big fish in a little pond.

Last year, when he was 9, we discovered that if I adjusted him before a game, especially while he was visualizing success in the game, his performance improved. We got into the habit of doing an adjustment before he left the house for the game. He would visualize himself putting the ball in the basket, going for a layup, making his free throws, and I would adjust him while he was thinking. It was remarkable; for me it was validation of the power of an adjustment. A subluxation can affect our thought patterns and behavior; getting rid of it can produce clarity and turn a whole attitude around! For Abe, this was a tool he could use to focus his good energy and to feel like he was being proactive instead of having jitters about the game.

This year, at age 10, Abe tried out for the travel basketball team. We weren't surprised that he made it, given his performance in the last few years. I was so proud of him, and proud for him - happy for this boost to his self-confidence. What I didn't realize, that so many parents already know, is that being on a travel team is a huge deal. The kids who make them team are all the big fish. This means that a child who has been at the top of his game is now playing with kids who might be better, or much better.

Today, Abe had his very first game with the travel team. He went to bed last night with the jitters. He woke earlier than usual and told my husband he didn't want to play. It's such a human emotion, fear. It can sometimes take us over. It's hard to explain to a 10 year old boy that you can "feel the fear and do it anyway," a very adult concept. So I told him the story of the TV show. Then I adjusted him visualizing confidence and visualizing making his shots. When we got to the game, I felt nervous for him. He seemed unsure and unlike his usual competent self out there on the court. Then, as if a switch flipped, I saw him snap into action - one move, one open shot, he took it, and SCORE! The crowd yelled. I watched his demeanor change in that moment, saw his swagger return. He ended up playing very well, making some very impressive shots and passes, and when he came out each time, everyone applauded.

I know he learned a great lesson today about fear and moving through it. I also know that this 10 year old is definitely not interested in talking about it with his mom. But I will keep adjusting those good positive thoughts into him. and I will watch him learning and climbing and jumping and quietly feel proud for him and of him, and be there when he falls off the pole early. I will repel him back to safety. That's my job.